6 ms·
Source code for a 1977 version of Zork
- donatj 3y agoWhat language is this written in?
- whartung 3y agoThe README says it was written in MDL. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language)
- defrost 3y ago1970's was MDL (a lisp dialect of sorts), later versions used a specialised subset: In 1980 Marc Blank and Joel Berez adapted the MDL language to create a subset called ZIL (Zork Implementation Language) which was used extensively by Infocom to create their award winning games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language)
- KerrAvon 3y agoThere are multiple versions of mainframe Zork available on GitHub. See https://eblong.com/infocom/#zorkmdl https://eblong.com/infocom/#zorkmdl for this and everything else Infocom.
- 082349872349872 3y agoJust as an aside on how far we've come since the mid-1980s: back then I had heard of a "Dungeon Definition Language" for writing adventure games (IF) by someone at UCSD(?). I emailed him to ask for the source code, and he kindly granted me access. Instead of a 'git clone' or downloading a tarball, however, this involved me (a) snail mailing him a paper cheque covering the costs of a tape, operator time, and postage; (b) waiting a week or so; and (c) finally receiving a large puffy envelope in the mail, which I was able to have read into my account (for free, due to a friendly sysadmin) the next working day. Then, of course, there was the usual hour or so of (d) fixing up all the little places where your correspondent's unix didn't do things quite how your home system's unix did, before having a copy that actually built and ran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-track_tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-track_tape
- larsbrinkhoff 3y agoProbably this, right? https://adl.sourceforge.net/ddldoc.html https://adl.sourceforge.net/ddldoc.html Do you still have that code?
- 082349872349872 3y agoThat was it! Unfortunately I definitely don't have it online. That was last century on a different continent; if I did still have it, it'd be on 9-track, in the bottom of a filing cabinet somewhere underneath less-rectangular-things on the back wall of my cellar, with two generations of my wife's family's stuff sitting in front of it, making the chances I'll ever get back there in the medium future ... rather low. Topology in the 21st century is funny: I'm 300 ms away from a server 12 time zones away, yet there are parts of my own house I haven't seen in over 3.156e+11 ms.
- flyinghamster 3y ago> Topology in the 21st century is funny: I'm 300 ms away from a server 12 time zones away, yet there are parts of my own house I haven't seen in over 3.156e+11 ms. I resemble that remark. I'm about to embark on some major housecleaning and getting-rid-of-crap.
- larsbrinkhoff 3y agoTo clarify, "Mainframe Zork" usually means the original MDL version for the PDP-10, Bob Supnik's Fortran translation thereof, or the C translation of the Fortran version. The other, "not mainframe" Zork, is Infocom's Zork series written in ZIL and running on microcomputers.
- larsbrinkhoff 3y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108626
- dang 3y agoThanks! Here's a merge of previous 'related' lists. If anyone finds others, we can add them... Infocom’s code-porting tools for Zork and other games have been found - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38528416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38528416 - Dec 2023 (30 comments) Zork Zcode Interpreters Appear Out of Nowhere - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38361247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38361247 - Nov 2023 (14 comments) Infocom-zcode-terps: Historical source code for Infocom's Z-machine interpreters - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326878 - Nov 2023 (24 comments) Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37893794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37893794 - Oct 2023 (160 comments) 1977: Zork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26181863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26181863 - Feb 2021 (91 comments) Zork source and binaries, January 1978 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24371538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24371538 - Sept 2020 (13 comments) Zork source code, 1977 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23108626 - May 2020 (81 comments) Exploring Zork (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20731333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20731333 - Aug 2019 (22 comments) Zork and the Z-Machine: Bringing the Mainframe to 8-Bit Home Computers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19982345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19982345 - May 2019 (17 comments) A Brief History of Zork (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946781 - May 2019 (10 comments) Source code for Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and other Infocom games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19672436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19672436 - April 2019 (238 comments) Z3 – The Zork CPU - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15169565 - Sept 2017 (11 comments) The DUNGEON (Zork I) source - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15147346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15147346 - Sept 2017 (50 comments) Your load is too heavy: Zork deep reading - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15138114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15138114 - Aug 2017 (32 comments) The Enduring Legacy of Zork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15073227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15073227 - Aug 2017 (48 comments) Beyond Zork - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10524438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10524438 - Nov 2015 (9 comments) Revisiting 'Zork': What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2705269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2705269 - June 2011 (133 comments)
- ghaff 3y agoPresumably parsers could be much more conversational and sophisticated today? Has anyone created such a thing?
- 082349872349872 3y agoSee https://ganelson.github.io/inform-website/ https://ganelson.github.io/inform-website/ (Inform 7 games are actually also programmed in a kind of adventure-speak, but if anyone is willing to play guess-the-verb in not-quite-natural-language, it'd be IF fans. eg https://literateprograms.org/dijkstra_s_algorithm__inform_7_.html https://literateprograms.org/dijkstra_s_algorithm__inform_7_... )
- chongli 3y agoYou mean an LLM-based adventure game? There’s AI Dungeon [1]. Or do you mean a more sophisticated conventional parser with a hand-crafted adventure? That I’m not aware of. From what I know about adventure games with parsers, they’re essentially just a big finite state machine with descriptions for each state and a hard-coded list of commands that trigger state transitions. There may be additional commands that print a whimsical or humorous response but otherwise leave the player in exactly the same state. There’s also usually a default response for when the input can’t be parsed into a valid command. The AI Dungeon approach, as far as I’m aware, isn’t really a game with rules and a reachable end condition. It’s just an LLM trained on fantasy role-playing description so it can produce a lot of stuff in response to any prompt. What it lacks, as far as I’m aware, is the underlying state machine. [1] https://play.aidungeon.com/ https://play.aidungeon.com/
- ghaff 3y agoThe latter. As you say, adventure games are basically state machines as I understand it. (I know a bunch of the Infocom folks but never dug into the technical details.) I guess I don’t have a clear idea of exactly what I’m asking for aside from a general feeling that you could create more natural feeling interactions with today’s technologies. But I’m not sure what that would look like. I should chat with one of my Infocom friends one of these days.
- bazil376 3y agoReminds me of when I stumbled upon these Zork maps: https://www.vaultofculture.com/vault/nst/2023/02/13/zorkmaps https://www.vaultofculture.com/vault/nst/2023/02/13/zorkmaps
- bazil376 3y agoDoes anyone know if zork is compiled to another language that is easily runnable in a local environment?
- larsbrinkhoff 3y agoYou can run MDL Zork with a interpreter called Confusion.